I enjoy sharing my personal experiences and discoveries with others in the hopes that it will inspire, help, entertain and/or inform them. I also absolutely love it when others do the same. The internet makes this a million times easier. Sometimes I will post on Facebook or Twitter and other times I will write a blog post. I thought it would be a fun idea to collect some experiences and discoveries that I have had during the week and summarize it for y’all here ever Friday. So here it is.

Flashback Friday’s: Episode 1
Family Time
On Sunday I got to spend time with family for most of the day. It was really nice to just hang out and enjoy their company. I always enjoy the time that we do get together and I always look forward to it. The adults talked, laughed and enjoyed some snacks together while the kiddles enjoyed some cartoons. I finally got to try the sour apple slurpee from 7-Eleven and it was delicious!

Becoming a Social Media Pro
Fast forward to Tuesday>>> I was going to different blogs and looking up tips and tricks on blogging like I normally do and I landed on Regina’s blog. She had so many wonderfully useful articles that I read a few of them and immediately subscribed and bookmarked her site. The next day I went back because I wanted to look around again and she had a new blog post just waiting to be devoured. It wasn’t just any blog post though it was a post about 33 Ways To Get Serious About Social Media. Her post is jam-packed with gems. Please take some time out and read it if you are serious (or even if you’re just a little interested) about blogging and/or building a brand by effectively using Social Media. If you are already fairly experienced with using Social Media a lot of the tips are good reminders, however, she breaks everything up into delicious chunks and offers so many great tips & tricks to take your Social Media expertise to another level.

Bake Sale & Game Time
Wednesday I spent some time editing blog posts (including this one) and baking cookies with my sister for a bake sale. I got to get a taste of all the baked goodies that were sold. Spiced brownies, chocolate chip cookies, coconut cookies, peanut butter brownies and rice crispy treats. Everything was absolutely delicious and it was a huge success. The bake sale was to raise funds for a Gaming Club at a local Community College. There were a ton of board and card games to play. I played Connect 4, King Of Tokyo (super fun game) and Apples to Apples. My sister won every game that she played!!

Gmail Inbox Zero… Not Yet
One of the things I have been working on lately is creating a more effective email system so that my inbox stays fairly empty and I can easily find what needs my attention right away. A couple of years ago I subscribed to a bunch of feeds and things just got out of control. I thought I would enjoy getting updates from my favorite websites, however, I never got around to really reading most of the emails. I found it easier to go to the websites when I had time to read or click on their Twitter link when they tweeted an update. I was so overwhelmed by all the clutter in my Gmail inbox that I basically stopped checking my email. I would log in and search for email from specific people (which were usually filtered into folders or labels thank goodness) and unsubscribe from as many subscriptions as I could. I have more than 1 email address but I wanted to get everything to come to my main Gmail account just to make life easier. I decided to take some time out and really tweak my Gmail inbox because enough was enough. Here is what I was able to accomplish:

♥ Mass deleted thousands and thousands of emails (over 30,000). I recently read someone cleaned out their inbox and they had nearly 100,000 emails to go through!!
♥ Unsubscribed from feeds and mailing lists that no longer serve me. I mostly used Unroll.me to make that process easier.
♥ Organized my labels to make my Gmail inbox work more efficiently for me.
♥ Worked on the filters to get the emails to go where I needed them go.

So far I am happy with the results. I will write a more detailed post about this topic later. I am so happy and no longer feel defeated.

Netflix Goodies
I always enjoy discovering shows I never watched before so when my sister suggested National Geographic’s 3-part series Brain Games I was excited to check it out. This series explores the brain and how it processes what it takes in. It includes a bunch of cool illusions and explanations of why we “see” things the way that we do.

Another cool series we watched was Stan Lee’s Superhumans. This series explore’s genetic mutations and the possible Superhuman abilities that may occur because of them. Both series are pretty cool and I enjoyed watching them.

What great things happened to you this week?

What are your favorite board or card games?

How organized is your Gmail inbox?

What series did you check out this week?